Waste not, want not for firm's energy from wasteApril 22nd, 2014

NOTTINGHAM clean-technology group Chinook Sciences has won the Queen's Award for Enterprise in Innovation, the UK's highest accolade for business success.

The company received the award for its continuing technical and commercial successes of its ground-breaking technology for recovering recyclable metal and generating renewable energy from waste.

The awards are traditionally announced on the Queen's birthday and recipients are invited to a reception at Buckingham Palace.

Chinook's unique process recovers valuable materials, including all the discarded waste metals, and generates significantly more than one megawatt of clean, green energy from a typical tonne of residual household or commercial waste.

It uses heavily-patented technologies involving a combination of gasification and pyrolysis, the thermo-chemical breakdown of organic materials at high temperatures without oxygen.

The system converts waste into a clean synthetic gas similar to natural gas, which is used to produce renewable electricity by fuelling high-performance gas engines and steam turbines.

Dr Rifat Chalabi, Chinook Sciences' group chairman and chief executive officer, said: "Chinook is extremely proud to receive the Queen's Award in recognition of our success in developing and deploying our innovations which are now being used in numerous plants globally.

"It is through the hard work, talent and innovation of Chinook's engineers and professionals that we have developed the Rodecs End-Stage Recycling system to be the best performing, most cost-effective, reliable, cleanest and safest technology for the maximum recovery of metals and the highest generation of power.

"The system is the greenest solution to maximise the use of the world's scarce resources."

He added: "We are very grateful that our unique ground-breaking technology, global success and international contributions have been recognised in this way.

"The award will help us to continue to boost our exports and investment, which in turn means more job creation.

"In the past five years, staff numbers at Chinook's HQ in Nottingham have doubled and continue to grow.

"Chinook's UK supplier base now includes more than 240 British companies who supply over 90 per cent of its end stage technology."

Chinook, which is also a finalist in the science and technology category of the Nottingham Post Business Awards, is currently finalising construction of the world's largest industrial gasification plant at Oldbury in the West Midlands.

The plant is scheduled to begin operations later this year.

More than £100 million has been invested in the facility, which is being developed in partnership with EMR, the leading global metal recycling company.

It will process 180,000 tonnes per year of recycling residues and recover 10,000 tonnes of clean metal that would otherwise have been lost to landfill.

The plant will generate a significant amount of electricity, with an installed generating capacity of 42 megawatts – enough to run the recycling operation on the site and power more than 30,000 homes.

Chinook has numerous other projects in the pipeline both in the UK and across the globe through its development subsidiary, Chinook Energy.

These include the development of plants in Carnbroe, Scotland, Thames Gateway in East London, and the Nottingham Energy Park in Bulwell. The latter will include a manufacturing facility, a research laboratory, training facilities as well as an end-stage recycling plant to power the site and local homes and businesses.

Chinook will shortly announce details about a recently-signed project in the Middle East. Work on the site and project has already begun for Phase 1 of the project and it is scheduled for completion at the end of 2015.

Once this plant is fully operational, it will be the world's largest waste gasification facility.